Very close-up, slo-mo of the Columbia launch debris.

Florida Today ^ | 02/01/03

[Prov1322]

FWIW

[Prov1322]

GREAT! Supposed to read "Close-up"...

[glock rocks]

thank you... hadn't seen the actual footage.

[amom]

Excellent. Thanks

Heads up AG.

[petuniasevan]

Can you fix his title for this kind FReeper, oh Zotmaster?

[Redcloak]

Does anyone know how hard this insulating "foam" is? Is it a bit of fluff like polyurethane? Or does it have a hard structural member?

[hole_n_one]

Good find!

*ping*

[null and void]

Didn't look like much of anything. Obviously fairly soft as it puffed into a cloud of frost(?) powder.

[StriperSniper]

BTTT

[eddie willers]

Thanks...good find.

BUMP!

[Dog]

I just saw video on Fox of a astronauts helmut missing its face shield.......scuffed up....looking like it went thru a fire.

*shudder*

[WillVoteForFood]

Given the speed that both the shuttle and the piece of debris would have been moving when this event occurred, how hard would debris have impacted the wing?

[FReepaholic]

It almost looks as if it goes THROUGH the wing!

Like it hits the top and exits the bottom (underneath) as the spray we see.

But, I don't see how that could be considering the angle the orbiter sits on the ET. It would make more sense if it went in from the bottom and out the top part of the wing

[Senator Pardek]

During certain launches of the space shuttle, thermal protection tiles on the bottom of the shuttle were damaged by impacts from fragments of insulating foam material that broke away from the external liquid fuel tank. Under contract to NASA Johnson Space Center, SwRI researchers conducted a study to assess the effects of these impacts on the tiles so that the safety of the shuttle during reentry could be assessed. A small compressed-gas gun was modified to shoot pieces of the very low-density foam insulating material at the tile. Images of the impacts were recorded with a high-speed digital camera to better understand the damage process. -

LINK from 1999.

[eddie willers]

Obviously fairly soft as it puffed into a cloud of frost(?) powder.

Butterfly flap it's wings in Brazil....
Hurricane in India.

Chaos Theory.

[twyn1]

I dont't know -- this was extreme slo-mo -- pretty big chunk and even tho' it "puffed" it looked nasty, seemed to me that it hit the leading edge of the wing and then pulverized as it passed under the wing area, I wonder how many tiles it may have damaged as it went under there ??

[FReepaholic]

>>...Didn't look like much of anything. Obviously fairly soft as it puffed into a cloud of frost(?) powder....<<

Unless that "frost" was what was left of dozens of tiles.

[b4its2late]

Assuming the debris did cause damage, what then could've been done? Could they have docked with the space station and waited for another shuttle to pick them up? Just wondering......

[Jesse]

On this video, looks like more than one piece of debris. I have not heard that discussed.


At the altitude this happened, the shuttle must have been going how fast? 4-6 thousand miles an hour? Ever had a hailstone hit you on the head? Even relatively soft objects have a tremendous kinetic energy at that speed. KE=1/2MV2. So a ten pound piece of foam hitting one of those critical tiles on the leading edge of a wing could just split it like a crystal.

I think that this happened, and the tile was lost and the remaining tiles started to delaminate, and a hole burned into the wing...which would explain why they lost sensor data from the left wing.

[Vinnie]

Look closely at the frame of the debris coming out from under the wing. The shuttle seems to yaw. Camera jerk or a hard hit?